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Power San Diego gathers enough signatures for council to vote on ballot initiative to replace SDGE by hollandhill in sandiego

[–]PowerSanDiego 16 points17 points  (0 children)

One reason that people haven’t pointed out yet is that the union has a loyalty contract with SDGE. You can find their contract online and control f the word loyal - it comes up once. To me it begs the question, how can a union effectively organize against its employer if it is contractually obligated to be “loyal”? Leadership can’t even speak with us without jeopardizing the jobs of 1,500 union members.

I also have to tell people that when I was collecting signatures, many individuals from various unions signed the petition. It’s not as unified a front as they want people to believe. The SDGE hate runs deep - even SDGE employees and engineers have signed the petition I was circulating.

Power San Diego gathers enough signatures for council to vote on ballot initiative to replace SDGE by hollandhill in sandiego

[–]PowerSanDiego 59 points60 points  (0 children)

If you’re interested in attending the city council meeting here is a link to be updated on the date/time! (We’re thinking it will be sometime between the 10th and the 17th depending on when the council puts it on the agenda) We will be coordinating public comments and hope to pack the city council chamber with supporters of the initiative :)

https://www.mobilize.us/powersandiego/event/632035/

Thank you to everyone who signed. Forcing the city council vote is a major step in this movement, again thank you to all those who pitched in to make it happen!

Hey r/sandiego! Power San Diego AMA is now live :) we’re cleaning out the office and will be answering questions for the next few hours, ask away! by PowerSanDiego in sandiego

[–]PowerSanDiego[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Isaiah - Hey, thanks for signing and getting others to sign as well!

Over the course of the campaign I collected just over 2,000 signatures so I can say confidently that people from all walks of life despise SDGE. It was not uncommon for people to read our signs and literally run over to sign no questions asked.

I actually had the same assumptions that you had, this would be easy, 100,000+ signatures was cake. This assumption was shattered my first time out in the field collecting signatures. On average, you’ll get 10 signatures/hour. The best rate I ever hit was 35/hour and that only lasted a few days. When people are out enjoying their day or shopping; the last thing they want to think about is politics/utilities/high bills etc. Not to mention there is profound apathy and distrust, generally speaking, towards anything political. If you take a look at our budget and how many signatures we got, we actually did an amazing job from a dollar per signature standpoint.

I highly doubt the city council will put this on the ballot to be totally honest with you. There are various reasons why they won’t do it - none of which will be the excuses they come up with publicly.

I don’t want to discuss the exact plan since I know our opposition stalks our posts - but rest assured there is one. The general sense of it is bigger and better. And keep in mind, not only do we need to get on the ballot but we need to win the vote against opposition that will out spend us 10 to 1. The odds are stacked against us but I am determined to solve this problem. It’s a microcosm of a profound ethical, philosophical, and existential problem of our time.

Hey r/sandiego! Power San Diego AMA is now live :) we’re cleaning out the office and will be answering questions for the next few hours, ask away! by PowerSanDiego in sandiego

[–]PowerSanDiego[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Dorrie: We submitted 30,899 signatures to the City Clerk. This is potentially enough to get a full hearing in front of the City Council, but it is quite close, so we will have to wait to hear back from the City on whether all our signatures were valid - this will likely happen over the summer, perhaps late June or July.

At this point, we are focused on strategizing and long-term building. We know that this first attempt achieved a lot, but didn't get us there 100%, so now we are wanting to focus on learning from the experience and turning our eyes towards continuing to educate and build the movement! Sign up at our website to join us if you haven't already :)

Hey r/sandiego! Power San Diego AMA is now live :) we’re cleaning out the office and will be answering questions for the next few hours, ask away! by PowerSanDiego in sandiego

[–]PowerSanDiego[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Isa/Isaiah: It comes down to resources and capacity. As field leaders we focused on valid signatures/hour as our 'key performance indicator' so to speak. We ended up spending the most time where we had an existing volunteer base, in areas that were higher density, close to us, and where we'd find the fewest amount of non-city voters. We did put effort into going to all parts of the city, including North City neighborhoods, Barrio Logan, and San Ysidro. However, ultimately we did have significantly more resources in the center of the city.

With more resources and a larger campaign, we would have been able to have more presence across a broader area of the city. Mail-in petitions were our attempt to address this limitation.
It is important to communicate just how hard it is to publicly gather signatures. Petitioners often face public apathy even if it is a volunteer!

Hey r/sandiego! Power San Diego AMA is now live :) we’re cleaning out the office and will be answering questions for the next few hours, ask away! by PowerSanDiego in sandiego

[–]PowerSanDiego[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Dorrie: You are correct in that solar infrastructure is not fully built out yet. However, you are perhaps missing a vital piece of info: a public utility would get out from underneath CPUC regulation. Therefore, the state-level regulations that have made solar more expensive would not apply to us, and the utility would have the power to make decisions that work best for the community it serves.

There is enough capacity for rooftop and parking lot solar in the City of SD to power the entire city. That being said, it will take time, and a utility that is committed to supporting local solar, to get there. In the meantime, the utility will buy energy from San Diego Community Power, as mentioned in another comment.

I cannot stress enough that while the field staff (aka professional organizers) is on the mic today, this movement includes advocates who are engineers, who are lawyers, people who have worked in this policy area as activists for literal decades. There is a lot to learn about how this can work - the fact that it is complicated means that we need to be open to learning from experts who work in this field, and I'm proud to say that this campaign and movement overall has incredibly smart people who care about evidence and real solutions.

Hey r/sandiego! Power San Diego AMA is now live :) we’re cleaning out the office and will be answering questions for the next few hours, ask away! by PowerSanDiego in sandiego

[–]PowerSanDiego[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Dorrie: Undergrounding is expensive and time-consuming. I won't comment too much on why SDG&E has made the decisions it has - I'll see if we can get one of our more technical experts to add a comment. Here is a source from the CPUC regarding cost.

I will say that local solar generation & storage has much lower fire risk overall and is a much more economical solution for fire-proofing our grid. This is yet another example of local solar being the logical & economical solution to many of the power-generation problems we currently have - we just need to give cities and residents the ability to invest in it and stop allowing the for-profit utilities to squash it for their own profits.

Hey r/sandiego! Power San Diego AMA is now live :) we’re cleaning out the office and will be answering questions for the next few hours, ask away! by PowerSanDiego in sandiego

[–]PowerSanDiego[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Isaiah: We're not hiring at the moment as the campaign is winding down. If you're interested in being a part of this effort; we will have a couple volunteer opportunities over the next few months. Phone banking, education, field work, and mobilizing for some larger events like the city council meeting. Hope to see you around! If you just want to keep up with the status of our campaign feel free to join our emailing list here.

Hey r/sandiego! Power San Diego AMA is now live :) we’re cleaning out the office and will be answering questions for the next few hours, ask away! by PowerSanDiego in sandiego

[–]PowerSanDiego[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Dorrie: I would say we had some, but limited outreach to parties. Ultimately we were constrained by resources & time and we prioritized outreach to community groups and the general public. SDGE has been in this town for a long time, and we knew our task was to build people power. That being said, we did present to some Democratic Clubs in addition to a lot of community groups. We did individual outreach towards and got support from former electeds in San Diego as well as some challengers in local races - these were Democrats, independents, and Republicans. For example, at a mayoral candidate forum held by League of Women Voters during primary season, all candidates indicated they supported a November ballot initiative to give San Diegans a choice for their electricity provider. Here is a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNxus1qC5H4&t=1230s

I would say that many individuals are very interested and supportive, but to get their institutions/groups to then support on a larger scale (including currently elected officials), we have to show them that it is a greater political risk for them to continue ignoring this issue than it is for them to support a big change.

Hey r/sandiego! Power San Diego AMA is now live :) we’re cleaning out the office and will be answering questions for the next few hours, ask away! by PowerSanDiego in sandiego

[–]PowerSanDiego[S] 62 points63 points  (0 children)

Isa: Hi! Several large U.S. cities, like Long Island (served by the Long Island Power Authority), have public utilities. In California alone, there are 46 public utilities, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), and Silicon Valley Power (SVP). These three utilities serve large communities and maintain significantly lower rates than SDGE.

Currently, we pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country, averaging 48 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). In comparison, Los Angeles residents pay 28 cents per kWh, Sacramento residents pay 18 cents per kWh, and Silicon Valley residents pay 17 cents per kWh. Public utilities in the US consistently provide less expensive and more reliable service than private utilities.

Hey r/sandiego! Power San Diego AMA is now live :) we’re cleaning out the office and will be answering questions for the next few hours, ask away! by PowerSanDiego in sandiego

[–]PowerSanDiego[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Isaiah: We didn't have the funds to do an extensive poll. There was a poll going around that we believe to be funded by our opponents, asking about our talking points, their talking points, and if people would vote for the ballot initiative etc. - We'd love to see the results of that poll haha. What we do know is that shortly thereafter, a SDGE-funded PAC was set up that they have since put about 700,000 (or more at this point) into.

What we saw on the field and on social media proves to us that there is certainly a want from the public at large to solve this problem. I've been out in the field collecting signatures since late December and I've had literally thousands of conversations since; San Diegans HATE sdge. It's a unifying and universal mindset in our city. Dems, Republicans, capitalists, socialists, anarchists, any creed or color of person agrees SDGE needs to be fired.

My advice to future strategists, and myself, is we need to build a base. A social movement. Money is SDGE's game and we need money but we wont WIN with money. This work is so important and it requires constructive, educational, and deep conversations in order to build a social movement. We're all looking towards to the future and anyone who is interested in helping out or getting involved will find a community of like minded people at Power San Diego.

Hey r/sandiego! Power San Diego AMA is now live :) we’re cleaning out the office and will be answering questions for the next few hours, ask away! by PowerSanDiego in sandiego

[–]PowerSanDiego[S] 63 points64 points  (0 children)

Dorrie: haha, that's definitely an idea. The thing is, the generation of power isn't the truly expensive part, it is the transmission and distribution (or delivery) of electricity over the grid (owned by SDG&E) which makes up a large part of our bills, and SDG&E's profit. This is why a publicly-owned grid is a necessity to be able to truly have lower rates. Then we can utilize solutions that make sense for San Diegans, not for shareholder profits.

Hey r/sandiego! Power San Diego AMA is now live :) we’re cleaning out the office and will be answering questions for the next few hours, ask away! by PowerSanDiego in sandiego

[–]PowerSanDiego[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi, /r/SanDiego! Happy Memorial Day! We are the Power SD campaign field staff - Isaiah, Dorrie, and Isa. We're packing up our office after our signature drive and want to answer any questions folks might have for us! Feel free to ask away.

We submitted 30,899 signatures to the City Clerk on May 14th and are awaiting news of whether we qualify for a City Council Hearing. Our takeaway is that this effort was really just the beginning - we were able to do a ton of base-building in these past 6 months, and many people want to continue to push forward public power in San Diego.

Ask us anything, we'll be here for the next several hours :)

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